Jerome Lorde was dressed to look like someone accustomed to daily pick-up basketball games and prodigious amounts of Gatorade. He was on a larger mission, though, one harder to measure than the points in a hoops contest.
Lorde was leading a basketball shoot-out with the third grader he mentors at the Truman School in the Hill, and some dozen other kids and their mentors. All the mentors drop by for one hour a week on their way in to work at Healthnet, the insurer headquartered in Shelton. There Lorde takes off his b‑ball togs, and suits up for his work in group sales. But his hour a week with Uly — Ulysses Torres — is often the high point of his day.
The mentoring program, run by the New Haven Public School Foundation, works best when the mentor, serving as a kind of alternative adult voice in the kid’s life, can connect. Lorde connects. He grew up with a single mom in a tough part of Bridgeport.
Having a mentor is a big deal for the kids at Truman, and the children in need far outnumber the 21 mentors (up from five last year) Healthnet provides. The kids who are coupled with a mentor tend to be the ones whose family situation indicates to the principal that having another adult relationship will have the most impact.
And Lorde has impact. During the b‑ball shootout, there certainly was that special relationship with Uly, which normally, during their weekly get-togethers, is a more quiet affair.
“We most of the time read, talk quietly in the library, and just try to connect.” said Lorde. “I never pry, but if he tells me about his family situation, I certainly tell him about how I grew up. We’re buddies.”
Lorde had been mentoring for many years through his church in Hamden, and in the Bridgeport schools, where Healthnet has had an ongoing program. When the company began to partner with the Truman School two years ago, Lorde became one of the lead recruiters. He was instrumental in quadrupling the number of mentors this year
“Some of these kids,” added Lorde, “don’t even know they can lift their eyes up and see the possibility of a world beyond their block. Or it’s all bounded in their imagination by what they see on TV. That’s why I dress the way I do for basketball, like today. I want them to know that I can do this, but also be in a suit and tie and in business, and I came from a hard place too.”
After screening and some brief training, it’s up to the character and ingenuity of the mentor to connect with his or her child. Actually, it’s mostly her — a fact not lost on Lorde, who is pained at the absence of men in the mentoring ranks. He’s made a push at his company, but even among the 60 in Bridgeport, he said, there were perhaps only ten percent men.
Sam Alviti (she prefers the shortened version of Samantha), who works with Lorde in large group sales, is one of the mentors who come from a very different background but has connected in her own way. Her two mentees, Mariah and Destiny, enjoy playing Life, the board game, with Sam. “It’s a good way when, you know, you land on places where you need to choose a career or a family, for the kids to talk about aspirations. They enjoy that and they open up.”
The other week she did her own research on the web to find other age-appropriate ice-breaker activities for the girls. She came up with word associations. She asked Destiny, a girl who appears to keep much inside, if she were a pencil. She asked if Destiny could be the sun or the moon, which she would choose, and why.
“I get as much as I give,” said Alviti, who organized this day around her mentoring. “This morning for example there was a stressful meeting at work, and this afternoon there are going to be probably two more. My time with the girls makes me realize what matters, when I see how important these visits are.”
Mariah said the other day, when Sam went down the slide, it was funny to see her mentor sliding down as her long blonde hair flew up.
Mentors work with kids in the library, or an unused classroom. They must stay on the campus of the school. Plus there is no meeting the kids outside of school or relating to them and their families beyond the mentoring hour. Alviti draws lines when the girls ask her to bring her boys in.
A number of mentors were not in evidence during the basketball shootout, Lorde noticed. “Not everyone connects. It’s by no means always easy,” he said. That may be in part because after appropriate screening done by the NHPS Foundation, there’s fairly minimal training. It may also be simply because mentoring is not for everyone. But when there’s that connection, something powerful seems to happen, a giving that is also a receiving.
And what was Lorde going to do about the mentors he’d brought in who weren’t there for the shootout? “I’m going to talk to them this afternoon to see what gives.”
We all need mentors, it appears, even, occasionally, the mentors themselves.
Currently the NHPS Foundation has five corporations and three colleges providing their employees to be NHPS mentors. According to Pat DeMaio, executive director of the foundation, the newest one coming on board next month will be Sikorsky Aircraft. For individuals or companies interested in volunteering in the New Haven Public Schools as mentors or in other capacities, contact DeMaio at 946‑6950.